Strategies for Developing

For lists of essays using various methods of development, see the Rhetorical Contents.

How can you spice up your general ideas with the stuff of real life? How can you tug your readers deeper and deeper into your essays until they say, “I see just what you mean”? Well-developed essays have such power because they back up general points with evidence that comes alive for readers. This chapter covers nine indispensable methods of development — giving examples, providing details, defining, reasoning inductively and deductively, analyzing a subject, analyzing a process, dividing and classifying, comparing and contrasting, and identifying causes and effects. A strong essay almost always requires a combination of strategies.

Whenever you develop or revise a piece of writing, you face a challenge: How do you figure out what to do? Sometimes you may suspect that you’ve wandered into the buffet line at the Writer’s Grill. You watch others load their plates, but still you hesitate. What will taste best? How much will fit on your plate? What will create a memorable experience? For you as a writer, the answers to such questions are individual, depending on your situation, the clarity of your main idea or thesis, and the state of your draft.

DISCOVERY CHECKLIST

Purpose

  • Does your assignment recommend specific methods of development?
  • Which methods might be most useful to explain, inform, or persuade?
  • What type of development might best achieve your specific purpose?

Audience

  • Which strategies would best clarify your topic for readers?
  • Which would best demonstrate your thesis to your readers?
  • What kinds of evidence will your specific readers prefer? Which strategies might develop this evidence most effectively?

Thesis

  • What development does your thesis promise or imply that you will supply?
  • What sequence of development strategies would best support your thesis?

Essay Development

  • Has a reader or peer editor pointed out any ideas in your draft that need fuller, more effective, or more logical development?
  • Where might your readers have trouble following or understanding without more or better development?

Paragraph Development

  • Should any paragraphs with one or two sentences be developed more fully?
  • Should any long paragraphs with generalizations, repetition, and wordy phrasing be developed differently so that they are richer and deeper?